Not Your Usual Tunnel Of Love Ride
by nvzblgrrl
Summary: Because someone had the brilliant idea of asking trafalgarlawsdepression (on tumblr) about this AU in the context of Frobin (with Franky & Robin taking the place of Will & Elizabeth) while I was logged on and I lost my mind spinning the rest of an AU. Not Frobin time all the time, but will be completely nuts because have you even seen these series?
1. Chapter 1

The world is large and strange. Perhaps not as strange as it once was when maps bore the legends 'here there be dragons' to make up for any factual knowledge, but there are still mysteries and curiosities to be found in it. Myths, legends, magic.

All of those things are still here.

They have to be.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

* * *

Nico Robin was young and full of questions concerning the world around her. It was hard for an eight-year-old girl to be much of anything else, especially when she was halfway through a voyage that was taking her from everything she ever knew to a completely new life on the other side of the ocean.

For now, however, as she leaned against the forecastle rail, staring out into the thick fog that had swallowed the ship and all the sea around it, she wasn't thinking about much of anything at all except her vague desire for something - anything - to happen. Even humming a few bars of a pirate shanty one of the crew had taught her - along with a warning not to get caught singing the words proper - wasn't doing much to pass the time in this silvery, nearly-empty world.

"Oy, oy, oy. Get away from the edge, Miss Robin - I might be a capable swimmer, but I'd rather not risk losing you in this kind of fog."

"Sorry," Robin said as she dutifully stepped away from the rail, turning her attention to the man in question. "There's just nothing else to do today."

The sailor tugged on his bandana awkwardly. "The bigwigs don't want you in the cabins?"

"They're making plans and such where they don't want me underfoot," she said before grimacing. "_Grown-up_ plans."

"Ah," the man agreed with a tone of understanding. "Grown-ups. Terrible things. Hope I don't ever become one."

"Aren't you in your twenties, Mister Yasopp?"

"Twenty-five. Still doesn't mean I have to be a grown-up," he said, sticking out his tongue in a played-up show of distaste. "Nah, I'm just an outsized powder monkey that got promoted a few more times than I probably deserved."

Yasopp was a gunner, which meant that for most of the journey, he was at loose ends, kept bouncing between other roles on the ship until the time for conflict demanded his attention below decks. He also, in a less professional context, was something of a storyteller, which meant that in the absence of a proper nursemaid, he was the next best person to be handling a child on board.

Robin resented the presumption that she needed a minder, but at least the one she had been assigned was an interesting one that didn't demand that she behave in a 'ladylike' fashion.

"Do you have any stories I haven't heard yet?"

"Anything you haven't heard yet? That's a bit of a tall order, considering how much you like to read…" Yasopp scratched his chin scruff thoughtfully. "Well, let's see… alright, if you've got a taste for ghost stories… how would you like to hear a story about ghost pirates?"

That particular combination of words immediately grabbed Robin's complete attention. "Ghost pirates?"

"Well, I'm sure you're heard of ghost ships," the man said with the sort of tone that implied that he knew for a fact that Robin had and probably had a better understanding of the subject than most.

Robin nodded. "Ships that have been abandoned for no clear reason or are left to drift after their crew all died. Like the Sea Bird or the Octavius."  
"Yeah, well, that's not the only kind of ghost ship out there - there's ones that are called that because they're crewed by the dead. The _undead_."

"Really?"  
"Really. I've seen a couple in my time, too - my hair used to be black, before a living skeleton screamed half the color out."

"Just half?" Robin asked, looking at the sailor's yellow hair.

He waved off the question casually. "Well, he might have gotten all of it if a friend of mine hadn't slapped it overboard. Turns out skeletons aren't very good swimmers,_ especially_ after their head goes flying off of their shoulders."

_That_ mental image of a beheaded skeleton giving an offended squawk as it was punted into the ocean got a giggle out of the girl.

"Well, anyway, since I did say I was going to tell you a good ol' ghost story, I should give you a proper tale instead of mentioning my own adventures off hand," Yasopp said as he sat down on a barrel, crossing one leg over the other. "They say that there's a number of ghost ships in this corner of the world - and that a certain few of them decided that, being of a similar condition, that there was no reason for them not to ally with each other."

Robin found a comfortable spot on a pile of coiled rope to sit, taking a moment to smooth out her skirts after. Some manners were more habit than anything else at this point.

"They call them the Armada of the Damned. Cursed pirates, all of them. Laid their hands on gold they shouldn't have, only to find themselves trapped in the twilight zone between life and death. The world's a big place, after all, with plenty of mysteries to run into and more than a few ways of dying that don't go quite all the way - and crossing the gods are the easiest ways of managing it you can manage."

"Gods?"

"The old ones. Not just the ones that the people of this area worship either, though they're angry enough given what's become of their people - occasionally, you run into someone who got cursed by the classic set. I know a few sailors who swear that their great grandparents ran afoul of Calypso, Circe, and others of their like back in the day," Yasopp explained before blinking. "Jeez, you have a way of making me go off topic, don't you? Here I was supposed to be telling a ghost story and we're onto mythologic deities."

"It's all very interesting regardless, Mr. Yasopp." Really, Robin almost wished she had a book to take notes. She made the decision to attempt transcribing the man's story from memory later and perhaps to ask if she could write down his stories as he told them in the future.

"I guess," the man said, scratching the back of his head. "Do you want me to tell any stories about that instead of the ghost pirates?"

"Whatever you like, Mr. Yasopp."

"Well, I guess I'll stick with the Armada of the Damned then," he said. "Now, where was I…? Right. At the beginning."

Yasopp adopted his storyteller's pose again, leaning forward in a way that left his hands open to gesture as needed to emphasize the weight and size of the things he was about to describe.

"Now, I can't speak to the perfect lore of what happened to bring about that particular alliance - maybe they were touched by the same gods, maybe they'd known each other before, or maybe it was just a twist of fate that brought them together - or even how many are truly involved. But I do know that some of the names tied to that dread force are some of the best known of their era, which is not so far gone as to make even the most practical men to sail these seas think these men dead and gone in the traditional sense."

"The White Brothers and their twin vessels Orthus and Cerberus, Bloodless Bo Beck and the sloop Grim Reaper, James Sterling and his salvaged shipwreck Nemesis, LaShafe of the Sandspine, and - last but certainly not least - Jolly Jack Rodgers and his dread ship the Harkaway. Those aren't the only ships in the Armada, but those are the ones best known. There's no telling how many lost souls are tied up in that stygian mire of black magic and black hearts, but as someone who had the passing privilege of meeting a few of those men before they went over to the dark, I can say that only a few of them deserved it in any way."

"I've never heard of any of those pirates," Robin said. "Did was Rodgers any relation to Gold Roger?"

"That's because you've spent most of your life on the wrong end of the world," Yasopp said lightly. "Though I suppose there's still a few pirates still keeping the waters around England interesting, it's a lot freer out here away from the company interests. And no, they weren't family. Nor friends, I would wager, for I believe Rodgers was a competitor with Gold Roger for the Pirate Lordship that ended up making him Pirate King."

"He lost, of course. Man was not nearly as good at making friends as he was making corpses or enemies. Usually both at the same time. Mean cuss too. Heart as black as the tar he painted his ships with."

"A black ship?" How odd. Most ships Robin had ever seen were either left bare or painted colors that made them bright and easy to identify at a distance.

"Aye, a black ship," Yasopp confirmed. "Always beware of black ships on these seas, save one, Miss Robin. All of them save the Pearl are said to be members of that undead alliance."

"What of the Pearl then?" Robin asked.

"The Black Pearl?" The tone the gunner had taken with the turn in topic was wistful, almost as if he wished to be aboard that ship rather than the Marine vessel he was currently on. "She's a pirate ship as well, but so long as she is passed down from one freedom lover to another, she'll never be anything to be fully afraid of."

Before Robin could ask anything else, Yasopp abruptly stopped, his expression changing sharply from that of a carefree storyteller to a seasoned and wary fighter as he sniffed the air. "Something's burning. Tar. Spent powder."

Robin sniffed the air herself. Now that the gunner had mentioned it, there was a new smell to the air - a harsh, acrid one that immediately raised one's hackles in a way that demanded caution. Fire.

She threw herself up to her feet and to the railing.

There were bits of debris floating in the water. Barrels, bits of broken boards… and the body of a boy, draped over a particularly large bit of shattered planking, bleeding and bruised.

"Mister Yasopp!" she yelled.

"What - Man overboard!" the gunner yelled as soon as he saw the boy. He grabbed a rope, winding it around a cleat in a tight knot that he tested the sureness exactly twice before launching himself over the rail and rappelling down the side of the ship with a lightning speed that would have been alien from the relaxed storyteller Robin had been speaking with earlier.

Beyond the minor debris field was the source of the burning smell - a merchantman ship, crushed in twain by whatever disaster had been visited upon it, and blazing like the Biblical Sodom.

Robin couldn't imagine anyone being alive in that.

"Bring him aboard, carefully," the sailors behind her were saying, finally drawing her attention away from that terrible blaze.

The boy was even more startling up close - wild sky-blue hair, tattered clothes, a battered body covered in burns, bruises, and scrapes… and a shallowly, but steadily rising and falling chest that said he was still very much alive despite those injuries.

"He's still breathing and he's not cold - must not have been in the water long," one of the sailors that had helped haul him aboard said.

"Hard to be cold within any distance of _that_," another said, staring at the blaze that had held Robin's attention so closely.

"He must have been next to the powder stores when that ship went up, with these sort of wounds," a third sailor whispered, his tone one of horrified awe. "That he's in this good of condition is nothing short of miraculous."

"Don't just stand there gawking - get a boat in the water and see if there's any other survivors!" one of the commanding officers barked. "And I want at least one gunner crew ready on the cannons just in case this is the work of pirates - that fire is far too bright to be more than an hour old!"

The deck became a flurry of action as the ashore boat was brought out and hooked up to the pulleys that would take it down to the water.

"Miss Robin!" the officer said. "If you would keep an eye on our young guest-"

She tried not to jump at the direct address. "Why me?"

The officer's face and tone softened slightly. "Should he wake, you would be the least likely to frighten him, young as you are."

That made sense, by Robin's own logic. It also, to her understanding, a sort of busywork to keep her out from underfoot.

She was fine with that. She had nothing to offer the rescue efforts, even if they did find anyone else.

Robin reached over to brush a stray hair away from the boy's face, only to have him snap to full consciousness with a gasp and a grab at her arm.

"It's alright," she said carefully. "You're safe here."

"W-who are you?"

"Nico Robin. And you? Who are you? What's your name?"

"C-Cutty Flam," he said, finally getting the words out around the shudder in his voice.

A strange sort of name, though this was hardly the time to be commenting on such things. The shudder in his voice was of greater concern - it wouldn't do for her charge to expire from something so simple as chill after his rather extraordinary ordeal. "I'm watching over you, Cutty Flam. No harm will come to you here."

With that, the boy's grip on her arm relaxed and released as he passed out again, eyes fluttering shut as the energy that had brought him to life so suddenly left again, leaving him to sleep on the deck despite the chaos surrounding him.

"Cutty Flam. Interesting," Robin mused as she looked him over. The wounds were still terrible, but if he had enough energy to do that without flinching, he'd most likely recover from-

Her train of thought stuttered to a stop as she noticed something - a thin woven string around his neck with something shiny on the end. Curiosity saw Robin pull on it, to see what pendant might hang on the end. A cross? A ring? A traveler's token? Perhaps a locket with a portrait of some person precious to him?

It was none of those things.

Instead, it was a gold coin. A gold coin with the glinting smile of a grinning skull smiling up from its strangely angular design that saw her eyes widen in recognition.

Pirate.

On impulse, Robin tugged it, the fragile string snapping easily under the pressure.

It wouldn't do for such a thing to be found on his body. Especially not in the wake of what was likely a pirate attack on the destroyed merchantman they'd pulled him from. Pirate or not, she wasn't going to let him die for something so small as a gold coin.

She turned her gaze towards the back of the ship, only to freeze as a dark ship pulled out of the fog.

It was a decaying ruin of a vessel that didn't look like something that should have been sailing above the water, much less at the wind quick speed it was moving at. The sails were tattered, the planks of the hull looked as if they were oozing tar…

And the flag flying above it bore a grinning skull over two crossed cutlasses.

Pirate flag. Black ship. Painted with tar.

"The Harkaway," she breathed.

Perhaps it was not. Perhaps it was just painted black as a manner of practicality. As some cheap seafarer's trick to ward off rot or to take advantage of a more fearsome reputation than the ship rightly had.

But all of those logical thoughts did nothing to calm her racing heart, even after the ship had vanished back into the fog as quickly as it had come - a ghost ship, in a third sense that Robin had never expected to encounter in her entire life, much less so early on in it.

* * *

Twenty years later, Nico Robin couldn't completely speak as to what made her take the coin or why she never told anyone about the black ship. All she knew was what she saw and what she did. She had saved the life of Cutty Flam and taken her price from him in the form of an object that could have seen him killed if found by less friendly eyes. She'd kept her silence in fear of being dismissed as an over-imaginative child.

Perhaps someday she would give that price back. Or even tell him the truth.

But that was not today.

Not yet.

She turned away from the window, taking only a glance towards the door before pulling open the drawer on her bedside table. Pushing aside the various trinkets that filled it, she found the clasp to the hidden compartment in the bottom and pulled up on it.

In the dusty space she just opened up, the grinning gold skull that had first looked up at her from Franky's chest locked eyes with her again.

Somehow, she knew in that moment that she would not be hiding it away again.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

*Bill Wurtz history of the world voice* Hell yeah, now we got _business_.

Based on my tumblr post covering the concept of Pirates of the Caribbean AU for the Frobin ship first posited by trafalgarlawsdepression that I immediately was all over like white on rice, this took… jeez, like five months to get this much done (not just this-this, but about 9000 other words not yet posted). Mostly because I was bouncing between other projects but also because the bits of this I was getting done were largely out of order based on my own memories of the Pirates of the Caribbean series (I hadn't watched The Curse Of The Black Pearl since I had a copy on VHS, so I had to track down a new DVD copy) and my muse hitting at different bits.

Also historical research. Because I'm _that _bitch.

This chapter is a touch shorter than what I've been aiming at in my fanfiction in recent years but that's just how this section decided to end so *shrug emoji*.

* * *

Yasopp took the part of Joshamee Gibbs, mostly because he was in the right age range to be an adult when Robin's a child but also like, of the options of 'man who tells sea stories', he fit perfectly. Plus it'll make her meeting Usopp later cute af.

* * *

The Sea Bird was a real (well, most likely) ghost ship that was found aground in Rhode Island in 1750 (or 1760). The Octavius is a slightly less substantiated and more fictionalized ghost ship that was supposedly found drifting by a whaling ship in 1775, with all of its crew and passengers found frozen solid and its log reporting that it'd been adrift for about 13 years by that point.

I just used these as examples for the term, rather than a specific tool for placing the story at a certain point in time.

* * *

All of the members of the Armada of the Damned are undead pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean - mostly the Online game, though Jolly Roger had to make the jump to being Jolly Jack Rodgers for obvious reasons, but James Sterling and the Nemesis were from the cancelled game The Armada of the Damned (and you can guess where I picked up the concept for the undead pirate alliance from there too).

* * *

Yes, there are reasons why that's not the Black Pearl itself making its intro at the end.

* * *

Questions and comments, leave in the reviews along with, as you can guess, the regular reviews. I hope you all enjoyed what's here so far - I've got more yet to go.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

Franky fidgeted awkwardly in the main foyer, feeling like a teenage boy instead of his actual age of thirty four years in the large and empty - well, relatively speaking, he amended as he looked around at the furniture and fancy candle holders that would probably break if anyone tried to put any sort of weight on them - confines of the governor's mansion as he waited to finish his delivery.

_Why_ he'd been asked to come up here when the errand was to hand over a sword to the newest Marine Commodore, he had no idea. Probably because it had been the governor who had commissioned the thing to begin with. But a job was a job and Franky wasn't in much of a position to be picking and choosing where and how he made his money these days.

Twenty years, he'd been… well, not really close to Nico Robin, in the usual sense of the term, but close enough due to her continued insistence on watching over him. It'd been long enough for him to realize that not only was she kind, she was - incredibly, unspeakably, superbly - smart and beautiful.

Also that he was in completely love with her. Couldn't forget that part.

But it had also been enough time to realize that, no matter how he felt about Nico Robin, nothing was ever going to happen between them. She was the - admittedly, adopted, but there was little difference in her status for that little detail - daughter of the island's governor and he was an ordinary nobody of an ordinary trade who happened to be the son of pirates, not that he'd ever willingly told anyone about that little detail. The only way their stars could be more crossed would be if Robin were actual royalty or if international politics or arranged marriages somehow became involved, which seemed a touch unlikely at this point.

So, that left just keeping his trap shut and not doing anything to embarrass her.

He smoothed down the front of his vest absently, trying not to obsess over the fact that the pink floral pattern was easily the brightest thing in the room after his hair.

It was bad enough that he had to dress himself up this much to be able to make the walk up to the mansion without getting too many weird looks, but the attack of the nerves that had decided to attack the minute he looked up at the building and realized that he was about to step into Nico Robin's world - so very different from that of a humble blacksmith's - wasn't helping at all.

Now, if Franky was back in the smithy, this wouldn't be a problem. Every interaction there wasn't loaded with societal expectations or bad memories, because everyone that went in was either there to do business - an easy exchange of money and services - or was on his level to begin with and the work itself was pure simplicity.

"I trust there were no difficulties in fulfilling my order?" the governor asked as he came striding down the stairs.

Nails? Easy. Door hinges? Easy. Locks? Easy.

"None at all," Franky said as he turned the case in his hands around to rest on the piano that sat in the middle of the foyer, snapping it open to reveal the sword within.

Swords?

Well, a little less easy, but still nothing complicated in the face of his skills. There were technical aspects to the steel folding and the precise eye needed to find the perfect timing on strikes, but compared to the guns and cannons Franky used to make…

He shook his head free of the memories before they could settle in properly as the governor inspected the blade.

Yeah. Swords. Easy. And not nearly as uncomfortable either, even if the manufacture of blades didn't spark his creativity and imagination like explosives and complicated gun mechanisms. Swords were only capable of so much damage, after all, and couldn't be so easily twisted and sabotaged as to destroy entire lives in a single shot.

Hell, Franky couldn't even find satisfaction in shipbuilding anymore, no matter how many times Iceberg called on his skills down at the docks. It's not like he hated the work, hell, he still loved it - but it was Tom's passion too, which just served to bring up those same bad memories and twisted up feelings left in the wake of his mentor and adoptive father's death.

"It looks to be all in order," the governor finally decided with all the air of a man out of his depth with regards to the subject he'd decided to involve himself in. "Though I rather think that the opinion of the man it was made for needs be considered-"

The front door slammed open as the man in question barged in.

"Apologies for my lateness, sir," Smoker said curtly, looking twice as bad as Franky felt crammed into that uniform. 'Neat' was not a good look on the man, just as much as 'polite' didn't suit his tongue, and it was unnatural to see him stuffed into a spotless, perfectly pressed uniform with his silvery-grey hair pulled back in the usual Marine style.

Yet another advantage to being a lowly blacksmith, he supposed - his only dress code was whatever he could afford and keep from catching fire in the forge.

On the other hand, Smoker was in a position to actually propose to Nico Robin without his suit immediately being dismissed, so it was hard to say who really had the better part of the deal. Franky certainly couldn't.

"Ah, Captain Smoker - or rather, Commodore, with your latest promotion," the governor said brightly, the slip a rather deliberate one that the man was using to call attention to the change. "I suppose I'll have to get used to addressing you with your new rank."

"And I'll have to get used to hearing it," Smoker replied with a tone that rather implied that he'd have been happier never to hear it at all.

"I will go fetch Robin - the maids have likely finished helping her get dressed by now."

With that, the governor bustled away up the stairs, likely thinking oh so merrily of his latest matchmaking scheme, leaving Franky alone with the Marine for a few minutes.

"I'm not usually one for swords, but it's expected with the promotion," Smoker said quietly enough not to draw the attention of the governor that had commissioned the piece. Though the man wasn't even in the room anymore, the architecture of the building made it easy for sound to travel through it. "I'll have to place an order for a matching jitte."

Franky rummaged through his memory for any clue as to what one of those were and finally came up with an answer. "One of those Japanese sword breakers?"

"They're dead useful things, regardless of if you're dealing with swords or fists," the man confirmed with a nod before drawing his new sword and giving it a couple experimental swings.

As usual, there was no more explanation forthcoming on exactly what sort of combat Smoker had seen where sword breakers had been a feature - a previous Pacific placement that preceded him being transferred to the Caribbean? An eccentric officer distributing their collection of unusual weapons to their crew in a pinch? -, but Franky was used to that from the Marine… and it was refreshing in its own way, not getting dragged into a one-sided conversation about world-wide tours and exotic experiences.

For all that was unsaid about his skill with sword breakers, his sword technique was basic - no surprise, given that Franky remembered Smoker being more of a 'hand's on' fighter when he wasn't using that two-meter-long beating stick to thin out the mobs of ne'er do wells Port Royal occasionally found itself host to. It'd be interesting to see how the man got around this new handicap, given that an officer of his importance wouldn't usually be allowed to have such 'crude' methods as using his own fists.

"You've done good work with this," the man finally decided as he slid the blade back into its sheath. "I'm sure Tashigi will tell me just how perfect it is later. I must ask, was the gold filigree on the handle necessary?"

Franky shrugged off the compliment. "It's a bit more flowery than I'd usually design, but the flash was part of the commission and it won't get in the way of the blade doing its job. Swords are the main thing we make now, besides nails and other small items. Not enough people in the shop left to do bigger projects. You know how it goes."

The Marine looked to side unhappily, the expression of contrition resting uncomfortably on his harsh features. "…yes, I recall. You have my condolences… and apologies, as always."

From any other person, those words wouldn't mean much of anything beyond a faint acknowledgement of embarrassment. From someone like Smoker? Franky knew it was as much an apology as he was likely to get from any member of the Marines for what happened to Tom and both he and Smoker knew it. There would likely be no real justice, but that at least one man in the organization felt bad for being even tangentially involved…

No, it didn't actually make him feel better. But it did allow Franky a bit of peace in handing any of his creations over to the man specifically.

"Come see me in the next week then - we'll take the measurements, talk materials and cost for your sword breaker," Franky said quietly as the sound of approaching footsteps started to echo down the main staircase.

Both men looked up just in time to catch Nico Robin's arrival.

It was odd to think that twenty years ago, she was rather ordinary to look at; now she was a woman in full bloom, time only serving to sharpen the beauty she'd grown into over the years. Her long black hair was twisted in the artful style currently favored in continental high society and the lilac fabric of her dress - probably the most modern and fashionable style on the market at the moment, or at least as close as could be managed across the ocean from where such decisions were made - gleamed richly against the warm brown shades of her skin. And her smile, so soft and so teasing when paired with those glitteringly intelligent eyes, that spoke of so many sweet secrets that she wouldn't be sharing any time soon…

Right, Franky thought to himself, that was enough staring. Time to scrape his jaw off the floor and try not to look too ridiculous for the next five minutes.

And then, she laughed. "I was just thinking of you, Franky."

"Nico Robin," he said, carefully stretching the syllables out as if tasting each sound individually. "I must be lucky to be blessed by the sight of you so early in the morning."

"Tis nearly noon, but I appreciate the compliment, though how many times must I ask you to simply call me 'Robin'?" she asked with a smile.

Franky grinned. "Always once more, I suppose, Nico Robin."

Her eyes slid off of him and to the man next to him smoothly, her expression changing minutely in the transition. "Captain Smoker."

The Marine dipped his head. "Miss Robin."

"Commodore Smoker now," the governor said gleefully. "Of course, there's still the announcement party to attend to, but I'm sure that most of anyone who's anyone knows of his advancement now…"

No thanks to the governor's big mouth, more likely than not.

"…speaking of which, we're getting close to the cut-off point of 'fashionably late', so I suppose that we must be going. Good day, Mister Franky."

"Governor," Franky replied with a minute bow. The man, satisfied with the half-hearted show of respect, nodded back before heading towards the waiting carriage. "And a good day to you… Robin," he added as she passed on her way to the door.

She paused for a breath at that, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, before she continued on to the waiting carriage.

Well, Franky thought, watching the carriage roll away towards the fort,_ that_ went well.

* * *

"-and there will be entertainment of course, I managed to arrange quite the quality band to perform. Quite difficult to have managed on such short notice, but their resume was impressive enough on reading. To think, finding a proper string quartet-"

The carriage bumped and rocked over the cobblestones, but it was regular enough for Robin to tune out both the bumps and her guardian's rambling about arrangements easily enough as she watched the houses and shops roll by with all their people minding their business, adults attending to their daily errands and jobs while their children ran about playing various games.

It was odd to think that only a few decades ago, Port Royal had once held a reputation as a favored port of pirates, enough so that there was an actual treaty written up that a number of not-insignificant crews would defend the island from all unfriendly comers in exchange for free docking and a certain level of immunity from prosecution.

The Government had changed that, of course. For whatever reason, twenty years ago, they'd finally decided that the Caribbean was suddenly worthy of Marine presence and, upon the promise of the return of 'proper' civilization and shucking the title of 'Sodom of the New World', the upstanding citizens of Port Royal were all too happy to trade their informal protection for something more uniform and properly patriotic.

The regular people had a considerably less happy time of it, especially those that ran the local alehouses, but they were wise enough not to say anything about it within earshot of their new minders. The pirates… well, while a fair few crews had found themselves an uncomfortable death at the end of a rope, the rest learned of the change in weather in time to steer clear of the storm.

Robin had been young enough to remember it, as she'd arrived in the town at the beginning of the transitional period. The memory of sailing through the decimated remains of a merchant ship and all the people that had once sailed with it had kept her from caring much at the time, but by the end…

Well. By the end, it wasn't just pirates getting strung up at Gallow's Point. And the wording of some of the charges had made her glad that she had taken Franky'scoin from him when they had met and hidden it away.

And now, it was hidden in a different way than before - instead of being tucked away in a false bottomed drawer, it was now hidden in plain sight around her neck, the long chain she had strung it on dropping the jauntily grinning skull between her breasts and into an area even her most daringly cut gowns would conceal barring some highly unlikely malfunction of fashion. There was still an element of risk in wearing it out in public, but somehow, she was more comfortable with its presence so close.

Perhaps that should have been worrisome, such a simple object having a power more fitting for some magical ring out of a mythological story, but for now, Nico Robin would settle for feeling slightly more comfortable in her current social role as the genteel young lady from the manor. At the very least, it would make the torturous corset nonsense she'd was being subjected to a bit more livable.

Alas, there would be no pirate attack to distract from the cultured activities she would have to sit quietly through, she realized with a sigh as the carriage finally reached its destination, playing the very portrait of a lady all the way.

Unfortunate.

* * *

The boat was small - a comfortable size for a few of one or two, but decidedly cramped when filled for five bodies. This situation was not improved by the fact that a good half of the available interior was full of water, a situation that was leaning towards a full sinking the more time passed.

Not that the occupants seemed overly preoccupied with that at the moment.

"It was Sanji and Zoro's fault, not mine," the captain of the ill-fated vessel whined as his navigator planted her fist in his skull. "They're the ones that put the holes in the bottom."  
"Because _you_ decided to do your stupid imitations," Nami hissed as she twisted her knuckles around Luffy's head in the world's most cruel and unusual noogie, her victim flailing in her grip. "And got them started fighting in the first place!"

"There wasn't anything else to do! We ran out of food three days ago."

"And _whose_ fault was that again?"

"Luffy's," the other three members of the crew said simultaneously from their various positions.

Their captain made a pouty face. "_Mean_."

"You're just lucky we found this island before we starved," Sanji said, looking over the rocky cliffs they were approaching. "Does anyone know the name of the town?"

"Are you serious - it's Port Royal. Only the second biggest city in the whole New World," Usopp pointed out from his place on the mast, gesturing at the hills full of houses beyond the docks.

That immediately perked Luffy up. "That's great! Shanks told me about this place. Best bars in the Caribbean and friendly to pirates."

"Really?" Zoro asked, his tone interested as he scooped out another bucket of water and flung it into the ocean.

"If they were, they aren't now," Nami said, focusing on getting their steadily sinking dingy to reach the pier. There was still a couple hundred feet between their current position and it, and the fact that no-one inside was still bailing out the sea wasn't making that distance any easier to close. "Marines cleaned out Port Royal after Gold Roger became Pirate King. Now it's a 'proper', 'respectable' town that makes its money off of slave auctions instead of drunks."

That soured the mood aboard the boat slightly. None of the members of the Straw Hat crew had ever been well disposed to that particular trade, but they weren't in much of a position to do much in their current condition.

"This place is also one of the main execution grounds for pirates on this side of the ocean, so I don't think I need to remind you all to keep out of trouble. I don't want to see_ any_ part of Gallows' Point again," she continued, gesturing at the rocky outcropping that arched out over the water to display the rotted remains of three pirates unlucky enough to 'enjoy' the hospitality of the local Marines within the last few months, "unless it's in our rear view when we make our getaway in our new ship."

"What about the fort?" Luffy asked, pointing up at the stone fort up on the cliffs. "That's where the Marines hang out. That makes more sense to avoid."

Sanji gave his captain a dry look. "I think you'd have to be blind_ and_ stupid to miss the fort, Luffy."

"I'm just confused why I'd have to be scared of the dead guys there when it's the live ones up there that want to kill us." The shipless and soon to be dingy-less captain inclined his head back towards the decayed corpses hanging under the natural arch of Gallow's Point. "Dead people can't hurt you."

"Uh…"

"Like, real dead people. Not the in-between, mystery-magic dead people," Luffy explained before sticking his tongue out in distaste. "Those ones are mean."

"Okay, good to know we're on the same page there," Usopp said with a minor sigh of relief. "Really would be awkward for _you _of all people not to believe in magic."

"I don't," Zoro said.

"That's because _you_ traded all of your common sense for the ability to do more violence, mosshead."

"_Oi_."

"No more fighting!" Nami snapped. "At least not until we've got a new ship that has enough room for you to bitch at each other without destroying something important."

"As you wish, my sweet Nami!" Sanji chirped, immediately changing his tune.

Zoro wasn't nearly as eager to agree, though he couldn't exactly argue the point being made. "Tch. Fine. I'll spare the idiot until then."

"Good." She turned back to the approaching dock. Based on how much more distance remained and how much of their boat was still above water. "Alright, everyone stop bailing and climb up top of the mast. We're making an _entrance_."

* * *

To any onlookers, it must have been quite a comical sight - a rapidly sinking dingy of rather ramshackle make crowned by its entire crew balanced oh-so-carefully on its tiny crow's nest as it made its final journey to dock. That all five of its crew managed their dismount from sinking vessel to steady ground without nary a stumble might have counted as impressive if not for the burble of their dying boat behind them.

As it was… well. The younger sailors in the area felt their dignity assuaged by the knowledge that they weren't ever going to be that incompetent and the elder ones felt reassured in their beliefs that everyone under the age of thirty was a fool.

And the dockmaster, for his part, simply saw another potential 'customer' to deal with.

"A shilling to tie up your boat to the dock," he droned before giving the small crew a rather unimpressed look over his spectacles. "And your names."

Luffy patted his vest pockets idly for a moment - and finding nothing in the process - before looking over to his navigator.

Nami rolled her eyes as she pulled out a coin purse from her own pockets.

"Three shillings, no names, and everyone goes on their merry way," she countered as she dropped three coins into the man's book.

The dockmaster barely blinked at the offer before closing his book. "A very good day to you then, Miss Smith and company. Enjoy your time in Port Royal."

She smiled as the crew walked on. Then, within the next ten feet, Nami had Luffy's ear twisted around as she dragged him close enough to hiss into his ear.

"Never ask me to pay your docking fees again," she warned.

"Like you didn't pickpocket him almost immediately after bribing him," Zoro said with a roll of his eyes.

Nami rolled her eyes before producing a fat pouch of coins apparently from thin air with a small jingle. On merit of sound alone, it probably contained ten times that which she had paid a minute ago. "Yes, but you know I still hate having to lose any more money than I have to. What's the point of paying the price for docking if the boat's permanently sunk?"

"It's not like it was actually your boat either. You didn't lose anything."

"No, it was my sister's."

"Alright, so that's probably a good reason to be unhappy."

"Because she's going to kick our asses for it?" Luffy suggested.

"Probably just Usopp, let's be fair," Nami said with a shrug as she let her captain go. "Nojiko doesn't really take swings at anyone else and he was the one that promised her that we'd bring it back safe."

"After you already had us unmoored and sailing away," Usopp said sourly. "I mostly said it to try to make her feel better."

"And now it turns out you lied."

"Yep. Really starting to think that's a curse, me trying to tell the truth and then crap like this -," the sniper jerked his thumb back to the end of the dock, where only the very tip of the pennant of their sadly departed ship was still visible above the water. "-happens."

"Might have to consult with Tia Shyarly on that one."

"Hell, for all I know, she's the one who did it. Seems like what would be her idea of a joke," he said, scuffing his heel on the dock. "So what are we looking for, ship-wise? Big and full of guns? Small and unsuspecting?"

"No," Luffy said before lifting up his hand, not pointing not at the behemoth guarding the mouth of the bay, but a much more slender vessel neatly tucked into a building dock, the paint bright and untouched by anything resembling trouble. "That's the one we want. That's the one that can bring us to the Pearl."

* * *

**Author's Notes**

A quick update on this fic! Mostly made possible by lower wordcount per chapter, already having some of the content done, the entire concept being pretty straightforward in the first place, and the whole story being pretty early on in the process.

* * *

OffclassingPhilosopher - sorry this story isn't exactly to your taste, though I am extremely happy to hear that you're still willing to give it a try despite that. I'm working on some other fic to be published and updated this year that's very different in tone, though it's still in the early stages at the moment.

* * *

Hitting the right language notes is a fucking nightmare in this story. Luffy refuses to be anything other than modern casual, Smoker won't stop jumping between Norrington's period gentleman and his own rough pattern, and everyone else picks and choses their tonal approach at their own pleasure. It's terrible and I love it.

* * *

One of the things related to the whole Frobin as Will/Elizabeth AU was the idea that you could fusion dance the first five Straw Hats into one (1) Jack Sparrow based on all their traits - Luffy being a captain with hat priorities and a weird mix of serious/silly, Zoro being a drunk with directional issues, Nami being a thief and escape artist, Usopp being a liar and marksman, and Sanji being horny on main all the time with surprising jumps into chivalry at times (along with the late appearing family drama aspect).

* * *

Okay, Port Royal is an interesting place historically (also geographically) in that it was at one point a huge pirate utopia with such a reputation for partying that people used to tell stories about the local wildlife getting wasted at the bars there. It eventually became the second largest city in the New World, behind only Boston. At its height, there were almost 6,500 people there and there was a rough ratio of one tavern for every ten people there and roughly 25% of the city's buildings were either brothels or bars if they weren't simultaneously both at once. Over two-hundred ships pulled in in a single year and there was enough coin passing through the place that they didn't use barter like a lot of other cities were doing at the time.

All of that was in an area that was a little bit less than a tenth of a square mile.

And then the 1692 Earthquake just… wiped it off the face of the Earth.

Unlike the movies, the real-life Port Royal was built on low, wet sandy ground, which is not good for surviving earthquakes or tsunamis… both of which happened during the 1692 Earthquake. The sand liquified and pretty much ate the place. About one to three thousand people died in the initial disaster, with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 dying after the disaster of injuries, disease, or getting caught up in the chaos of looting.

There were a few attempts to rebuild after that, but none of them really took on account of various disasters - usually hurricanes, though there was a fire and another earthquake involved at different points - and even today, it's a pretty small community with somewhere in the ballpark of 3,000 people. Some of the ruins are still visible underwater outside the current incarnation of Port Royal, which is really cool.

The movie version is cooler to look at though with its cliffs, so we'll just roll with that while taking notes from the real thing whenever that adds to the coolness or plays well with the plot (like the pirate execution capital of the New World and Gallows' Point bits) because the plot kind of breaks without that geography. We can just pretend that Port Royal was founded somewhere else on Jamaica in this universe. Maybe where Negril would be in ours, except with a bay deep enough for ships. Or maybe Jamaica's just generally rockier in the PotC universe.

* * *

Questions and comments, leave in the reviews along with, as you can guess, the regular reviews. I hope you all enjoyed what's here so far - I've got more yet to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

Monkey D. Luffy had an easy way of moving. Really, it was his only way of moving, with a few variations on it depending on the terrain or his own needs, but to anyone who paid attention to such things, it'd be universally easy to recognize it as 'easy' - informal and loose jointed, no hesitation in letting his sandals slap loudly against both the ground and the soles of his own feet, and certainly nothing that really told any watcher where the boy was likely to go next until he was already most of the way there.

Rarely did anyone guess that his mind didn't work in exactly the same way, because it fit the expectations that came with the rest of the visual; the work-worn and sun faded clothes, the tattered straw hat, the calloused hands, tanned skin, messy hair… even the scar on his face, though in the right place for a duelist of better breeding, spoke to a rough and rowdy nature that merely marked him out as a mundane sort of trouble. All in all, the visual said he was the better part of harmless - young, poor, ill-bred, perhaps even a touch simple for how easily a grin jumped to his face.

The visual wasn't necessarily _wrong_, but it did make it easy to gloss over everything else Monkey D. Luffy was, which could be a fairly extensive list depending on how you decided to divvy it up.

The two guards minding the Interceptor, being relatively new to both the idea of being Marines and proper threat assessment and entirely unversed in the nature of any individual bearing the name of D, wouldn't have any inkling that such a list existed.

Luffy's crew, on the other hand and to their credit, was a bit better informed on such matters.

Usopp ducked easily under the arm his captain flung over his shoulder as he returned the gesture in kind, Nami and Sanji's footsteps fell silent as they dropped back half a dozen paces into the shadows, and Zoro…

Well.

The fact that he had a tendency to walk into a place like he owned it without an ounce of shame counted as a form of stealth in its own way, even without the benefit of a distraction occupying the guards. Which Luffy and Usopp were doing right now as they made their way down the dock, sandals and boots slapping loudly against the wooden planks.

The blond of the set was the more alert of the two, jumping up to his feet as soon as he saw Luffy and Usopp make their way down the dock. "You can't be here - this place is off limits."

"I thought the term was out of bounds?" the pink haired one asked as he took up position, only fumbling his musket once.

"It's the same thing! Don't get distracted!" the blond scolded before turning his attention to the trespassers. "Now, what are you doing here! State your business!"

"Just looking," Luffy said as he leaned out over the water to get that much closer to the ship.

"You can look from the shore."

"Maybe at the whole thing," Usopp agreed. "But the details? Really, to admire you gotta get close up."

"Where's the figurehead?" Luffy asked from where he'd scooted down to the end of the dock.  
"Get away from there - that's because express built Marine vessels don't have them!"

"Really? That's boring."

"I'll pass on the message to the shipwright. _Now get off this dock_."

"Figurehead or not, it is a pretty boat," Usopp said conversationally to the guard not busy trying to capture the wild Monkey at the end of the dock.

"Ship. She's the Interceptor! Pride of our local fleet."

Nobody mentioned that the 'local fleet' consisted of perhaps three or five proper ships at the moment, barring an enlistment of an non-Marine vessel, but it wasn't a bad selection for a single port. On the other hand…  
"I thought the big one was," Luffy said, pointing towards the big ship at the mouth of the harbor as the other guard dragged him back to where Usopp was standing.

The pink boy wilted slightly in his uniform. "W-well, I mean… the Dauntless is certainly the power in these waters, but the Interceptor just hasn't had the chance to make her reputation yet! She'll do great once she gets out into the field!"

"She fast?" Usopp asked.

The pink haired boy perked up immediately at the chance to wax poetic about the Interceptor. "Extremely! She's of a new design that allows her to slip through the water smooth as silk, which combined with her sail arrangement will ensure that she reaches her top speed in record time - her placement here is part of her proving. If the Interceptor performs well enough, she's going to be the first of a whole new class of corsair chasers!"

The boy with the onion shaped bowl cut next to him coughed into his closed hand, distracted from his original business of Monkey wrangling. "Nerd."

"So this _is _a very fast boat," Luffy said, blinking as he looked the vessel in question over. It might not have been big, but it did have a certain sleekness of design that made the claim believable, if nothing else.  
"The very fastest," the pink one confirmed again before frowning. "Ship."

Usopp made a show of giving the Interceptor a disbelieving once over. "Really?"

"Really."

"Huh." Luffy scratched his head in an exaggerated fashion. "Usopp, I thought the Black Pearl was the fastest."

"Oh? Well duh. The Black Pearl is as fast as a shadow in the moonlight. She's the night wind turned into wood and canvas. The only ship that could hope to match her is the Flying Dutchman herself and that's only with the wind in her favor." The sniper put on a haughty look, pressing his hand dramatically against his forehead as he leaned back to maximize the effect of looking down his nose at the ship he was disparaging. "This little tub can't hold a match, much less a candle to her."

"The Black Pearl? Well sure, if you're bringing fairy tales into the running, sure she's faster! Lies are always faster than truth!" the pink haired of the pair squawked. "But the Interceptor is as real as it gets!"

That finally broke through the irritated disinterest of the blonde Marine. "Fairy tale? Koby, the Black Pearl _is _real."

"Helmeppo, you can't tell me that you think the Black Pearl is a _real _ship."

"Why not? I've seen it!"

Koby pinned his partner in place with a very unimpressed look. "You've seen a black ship, with black sails, flying the black flag, crewed by the damned, that never leaves any survivors in its wake?"

"Well considering I'm alive, we can leave out the last bit!"

"You know, I never understood the whole 'never leaves any survivors' bit so many stories have. How do people know the story if nobody survived?" Usopp mused as the two Marines started arguing how the hell a person was supposed to discern damnation just by looking at a given subject.

The argument built up with such speed and fervor that neither of the bickering pair noticed Zoro go aboard the vessel they were meant to be guarding, allowing the swordsman to get in a few test swings to get a sense of if there was enough room to get into a proper spar with the cook. Nami, for her part, seemed more interested in getting a feel for the steering wheel after her boarding, while Sanji slipped beneath deck - likely to check out what kind of galley the Interceptor had to work with.

None of those arrivals had registered to the boys meant to be guarding the ship.

"Maybe someone wrote something down?" Luffy suggested with a shrug before his eyes sparked with understanding and he clapped a closed fist down on a palm with a resounding smack of brilliance. "Oh, or if it was a bear or some other animal, you could figure it out by the tracks if you showed up after! Or what's left of the people it ate!"

"I guess…" his gunner conceded as the two started to make their way onto their soon-to-be-stolen ship. This was shaping up to be one of their cleaner escapes, which was an excellent change in fortunes from the unintentional sinking Nojiko's boat earlier. "Though I don't think that works for every story like that. _Especially_ the ones that are talking about a specific thing showing up. Bears are one thing - demon bears are another."

"I fought one of those before. Didn't taste good."

"God, I hope you cooked it first."

"Nah. Ace did though!"

Behind them, the argument between the guards had finally begun to slow down.

"So we agree that you saw a black ship," Koby said.

"A black ship with black sails flying the black flag," Helmeppo clarified.

"But not crewed by the damned?"

"I don't know, it's not like they were on fire or had horns and I wasn't planning on getting close enough to ask! They were pirates, damned or not!"

"And I'm saying that there's no rule that says only one ship in all the world can be painted black and use black sails. You probably just ran into some pirates that decided to take advantage of the legend of the Black Pearl to make themselves scarier to their victims."

"…I suppose that makes sense," Helmeppo finally conceded, a faintly mulish expression on his face.

"Of course it does. I don't make arguments without knowing what I'm talking about," Koby said, adjusting his glasses with a satisfied look. He turned back to where Luffy and Usopp had been standing before. "So that's how I know that the Interceptor is the fastest ship in - where did they go?"

"Maybe they left?" Helmeppo asked, turning around before freezing. "Koby!" he hissed.

"What?" Koby asked before turning around to follow his partners wild gesturing and finally seeing the would-be ship thieves busying themselves with the processes involved in setting off. "Oh - oh no. We're going to be in such trouble."

The pair ran up the gangplank, almost falling over each other in their rush to get at least one of the invaders off of the ship they were supposed to be protecting.

"You can't be on board this vessel!" "Where did you all even come from-?" "The attempted theft of a ship will result in a charge of piracy which is a hanging offense!"

The swordsman looked up from where he was untying the mooring ropes. He only had only begun work on the first of these, but the fact that he hadn't gotten frustrated enough to attempt cutting through them spoke volumes about his current good mood. "Fuck off."

The pair quickly turned their focus back to the less lethal looking members of the crew, trying not to look overly nervous about their current position. They did not succeed in that by much, but it was a worthy attempt.

"Y-you can't be here," Koby finally stuttered out. "It's-it's off limits- I mean out of bounds for civilians."

"That's of course assuming that we are civilians," Nami said, leaning on the wheel as she rested her face in the palm of her hand. "For all you know, we're career pirates who don't care that we're breaking a few little rules about where we are and aren't supposed to be."

"I- I don't-"

"Don't worry about it. If we really are pirates, we aren't the mean kind," the navigator said with a smile and a wink. "You'll live to talk about it."

Koby and Helmeppo couldn't help but twitch their heads in Zoro's direction before thinking better of it, jumping into a cold sweat-soaked version of parade rest.

"Oh, don't fuss over him. He's a big softy. Completely harmless."

"Oi," Zoro snarled. "You want to pick a fight with me, witch?"

Immediately, Sanji sprang to Nami's defense, sparking - or perhaps reigniting - a fight between the two monsters of the crew that proved, if nothing else, that the Interceptor had enough deck space to allow for such violence to take place without destroying anything vitally important by mistake.

"Well, so much for a quick getaway," Usopp sighed as he settled into a comfortable pile of coiled rope to wait out the fireworks. "We'll be lucky if they're only at this for an hour."

* * *

Smoker had never been a man for ceremony, regardless of if that ceremony involved standing, sitting, kneeling, bowing, or any other state of existence. He barely tolerated the ones that took place among the men - those ones were at least good for morale, no matter how stupid it felt to go through that damn line crossing ceremony dressed up like a poor man's Poseidon.

This slow affair of marching, turning, presenting arms, and other machine motion buffoonery wasn't nearly as interesting as any of those.

Approach. Turn. Salute. Turn the other way. Receive sword. Show off sword for nearly a full solid minute using a selection of moves that mean absolutely nothing in a real fight. Put sword away. Bow. Receive unwanted promotion. Partake in small talk so dry and canned it might as well come from the back of a ship's larder three months into a voyage. Resist urge to escape 'party' by throwing self off the top of the fort and into the ocean below. Hold tongue with regards to opinions about the governor and his meaningless congratulations -

"Do you have a moment to spare, Commodore?" Miss Robin asked, breaking his concentration from both his desire to throttle one of his many brainless 'well-wishers' - ignorant appearance obsessed bastards probably didn't know he even fucking existed before today - and the suffocating task of keeping impulses like that under control.

"For you? As many as you would like."

Ignoring the storm of polite tittering that statement stirred up, Smoker followed Nico Robin away from the main body of the party and to the relative seclusion of the fort's battlements.

Nico Robin was…

'Interesting' was the first word to come to mind, hardly one that he would voice aloud. One didn't just describe a person, particularly women, but there wasn't much other way to word his feelings towards her; she drew his interest.

Not through being beautiful - not to say that she wasn't, because she certainly was, but to settle on that point alone was an insult to her wit and personality. No, it was the look in her eye; the sharp intelligence, wicked streak of humor, and ability to communicate any possible thing at all through even the most minute shift in expression that both complimented and went far beyond the skill of polite and artfully neutral language most ladies were coached in from a young age.

Perhaps it was that aspect that made it difficult to pin down if his interest in her was something truly romantic or if he just really wished to be blessed with such intelligence in his work place for once. Not to disparage of his underlings, but… well. He wouldn't trust most of them to watch a goat on their lonesome, much less mind a ship.

That was why he had made sure there were at least two on each of the ships in the bay. If nothing else, that would reduce the risk of buffoonery.

…actually, now that he's had the thought, Smoker can't help but cast his eyes towards the Dauntless and the Interceptor.

Neither seem to be an unusual color or on fire, so he assumed they'll be fine for the next ten minutes.

"Tashigi," he said to his subordinate just as she'd rushed to his side. "If you'll get drinks for me and the lady."

"Sir?" Tashigi asked, eyes darting between her commanding officer and Robin for a moment.

"_Now_, if you don't mind."

The lieutenant finally fled, offering at least a short reprieve from any sort of audience to start spreading rumors and assumptions around the island, though Smoker doubted that he'd be free of them anyway. There were already eyes following his and Robin's walk to the battlements and no amount of mystery regarding the contents of their conversation would stop people from making the worst assumptions.

Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.

Story of his goddamn life.

He joined Robin at the height of the parapet, right next to the bell that would rally every Marine in the base if rung. It was relatively private, outside of the direct line of sight of the main party without intruding into the territory of inappropriate isolation.

Almost as soon as he arrived, Robin began the conversation. "Commodore Smoker, do you intend to make a suit for my hand in marriage?"

Smoker didn't pretend to understand women, either on a grand scale or individual level.

Hina didn't count. Tashigi didn't count either.

Hina was the older sister he'd never had or wanted but had gotten anyway, always nosing into his business and pulling him out of trouble that he didn't particularly want to be out of. Tashigi was a well-intentioned mess of a subordinate with an unfaltering idealism for what their organization was supposed to stand for and a tendency towards clumsiness that might end up proving fatal one-day. Neither were to be relied or even confided in when it came to matters of romance - Hina would be too smug about it to offer any useful advice and Tashigi would immediately tell everyone else in the unit about the whole sordid affair, probably by accident as she tried to cover up each fresh detail she spilled.

To be fair, anyone else he could possibly consult with on the subject would be similarly useless save for the few members of the Marines he knew had avoided setting their personal lives on fire in some fashion or another, but of those five individuals, he was friends with none and thus could not justify nor explain his decision to defer to their expertise in the subject.

'Oh yes, Vice Admiral Jonathan, I've recently been promoted and found myself in position to make a romantic suit to a woman I find intriguing on several levels, however I am possessed of the knowledge that she is more than likely in love with a man to whom I and the organization which I represent have done a great injustice and that this is a mutual affection between the two. Is there any way to salvage the situation in my favor or is romance truly the crapshoot I assumed it was the first time I was exposed to Shakespeare?'

Definitely not something fit for post, especially when it wasn't uncommon for one of the Cipher Pol organizations to open letters between Marines in search of undisclosed and exploitable information.

So, he defaulted to his usual approach to such questions - 'how would I take this situation if I was on the other side of it?'

In this situation the answer would be…

"If you'd like."

At her questioning look, he explained. "I'd like to think I'm smart enough to know better than to assume a woman's thoughts and feelings towards me, especially with regards to such a life altering decision. I'm also not ignorant of the pressure that would be on you to accept such an offer if made. Personally, I would prefer that, should I be married, it would be to someone who actually likes me rather than the political possibilities attached to my career or the convenience of such a union."

"That consideration does you credit, Commodore," Robin said with a slight dip of her head, her usual polite smile crinkling slightly in the direction of something else. The reassurance that he had in fact made the right choice with regards to his would-be suit was comforting. "No, I would not like such a suit at this time."

'At this time' was the key part of that sentence. "Keeping your options open then?" Smoker asked, as if he didn't already know who had caught the lady's eye and favor. The blacksmith Franky was a lucky man, to have the love of a beautiful woman, even if societal mores and other factors kept that love from ever being properly realized or recognized as anything more than a star-crossed spark.

"As I prefer them. My preferred choice is a risky venture, but the one I feel I would find most fulfilling in the long run. However… a lady must take into consideration the reality of her situation." Her eyes glittered as she smiled at him, not the polite expression of before but a far more genuine look. "I don't at all dislike you or the idea of your hand in marriage, Commodore. I shall take your… hypothetical suit under consideration. If you are still willing to offer such, now that we've had this conversation."

There was little Smoker could do but give a small nod of acquiescence. "Then consider my offer standing, until such a time that you can make a final decision on the matter."

"I thank you, Commodore, for your understanding on the subject."

The clatter of Tashigi's uneven footsteps on paving stones signaled the end of the conversation even before the harried lieutenant came running into view, two tea cups threatening to go flying if the girl loosed her death grip on them for even a second. The fact that there were no splotches of said tea on her uniform seemed more an act of God than anything else -

And the fact that she finally tripped on that last step, launching herself at just the right angle to knock Nico Robin off of the battlements while remaining unscathed - well, apart from the two cups' worth of tea now staining her uniform -, was clearly the work of the Devil.

Smoker's mind scuttled for a moment as the scene played before him in painfully slow motion, only to snap back to the lightning speed of disaster the moment he managed to start moving his body again. His one chance at possible catching Robin before gravity could properly snatch her away fell through his fingers with a scratch of ornate lace, leaving him to watch as she fell down towards the ocean crashing against the bottom of the cliff.

Somehow, in a flash of mercy from above or the Devil's own luck, she managed to avoid the rocks, but…

Was she conscious after hitting the water? If she was, would her fine dress allow her enough freedom to keep herself afloat? Did she even know how to swim?

"Captain - I mean, Commodore! Do something!" Tashigi screamed, drawing the party's attention in the worst possible way.

"Tashigi," he snapped. "That's the ocean. Forget the hundred-foot drop and the rocks that she somehow managed to miss; _I. Can't. Swim_."

Tashigi did a series of takes, staring bug eyed at the ocean below and then at Smoker several times in quick succession. "…oh no."

Smoker personally favored a far rougher sort of exclamation to sum up his feelings about the situation, but that would do for now. "Anyone that can swim, follow me!"

A whole lot less of his men than he would have liked scrambled.

Typical that this would happen the day he finally decided to propose. The only thing that could make it more hideously perfect would be a pirate raid or three.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

Sorry for the delay in updating. This part was a little hard to get out - I had an idea of what I wanted from the attempted ship theft and already had Smoker's thought process regarding proposing to Robin, but it was stringing it together that was tricky (along with a few IRL hang ups)… and it also ended up being a bit longer than I expected, as I expected for Robin's rescue by the gang was supposed to directly follow her fall… but this works pretty well dramatically.

Tashigi being the reason for Robin falling off the fort (or, in this case, unintentionally yeeted (yote?)) was one of the earliest things I figured out though. Dicking around with Koby and Helmeppo was a more recent bonus.

The reason for the change in that is that it's a bit difficult to trace the exact history of corsets (and just as difficult to avoid the horrifying pictures of how tight people would lace those things, though at least a few of those are exaggerated for sales/scare tactics purposes), but I do know that the most severe forms of straightlacing (aka the kind of corset wearing style that would be capable of fucking someone up in the same way that Elizabeth was in the movie) required the invention of the metal buttonhole because that was the only material that could hold up to the strain of being under that kind of pressure. I can't specifically remember if steel boning was also a necessary feature for that level of lacing, but at the point of history in time I'm working with for this fic (roughly the mid 1700's), most corsets would have baleen/whalebone boning - and the sort of corseting Elizabeth had in the movie wasn't nearly as severe as some of the shit that was going on when steel boning was a thing so I think we can call metal buttonholes a happy middle ground here… which wouldn't be enough to do the pass out thing, thus requiring the Drama Ex Machina of Tashigi being a klutz.

* * *

Other historical research -

Straw hats have been known to exist since the middle ages, though admittedly, it's a little hard to track down exactly what forms they would have taken during those periods but Luffy's hat has a simple enough design where it would be more unreasonable to say it flat out wouldn't exist.

Brook's top-hat would be pretty out of era though. He could have a capotain though.

Overalls are only provable to exist back around the 18th century, but might have proceeded that time because documentation of the average laborer's habits and protective gear wasn't always extensive - plus I think that I saw a few present on background characters in Pirates Of The Caribbean so. Usopp's classic look stays.


End file.
